HOUSTON: Micromobility vehicles such as e-scooters — which are seen as potential solution to help tackle traffic congestion in cities — may pose security and privacy risks for the riders, researchers, including those of Indian origin, have found.
The researchers from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) in the US found that e-scooters have risks beyond the perils of potential collisions.
“We were already investigating the risks posed by these micromobility vehicles to pedestrians’ safety. During that study, we also realised that besides significant safety concerns, this new transportation paradigm brings forth new cybersecurity and privacy risks as well,” said Murtuza Jadliwala, an assistant professor at UTSA, who led the study.
According to their review, hackers can cause a series of attacks, including eavesdropping on users and even spoof GPS systems to direct riders to unintended locations.
Vendors of e-scooters can suffer denial-of-service attacks and data leaks, according to the researchers, including Nisha Vinayaga-Sureshkanth, and UTSA postdoctoral fellow Anindya Maiti.
“We’ve identified and outlined a variety of weak points or attack surfaces in the current ride-sharing, or micromobility, ecosystem.
This could potentially be exploited by malicious adversaries right from inferring the riders’ private data to causing economic losses to service providers and remotely controlling the vehicles’ behaviour and operation,” said Jadliwala. (AGENCIES)
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